Russia Adopts Blustery Tone Set by Envoy

Thursday

Aug 28, 2008 at 3:28 AM

Russia’s representative to NATO, Dmitri O. Rogozin, often derided for his forceful style, is now taken more seriously.

CLIFFORD J. LEVY

MOSCOW — Here is one measure of the aggressive shift in Russian foreign policy in recent weeks: Dmitri O. Rogozin, Russia’s representative to NATO, a finger-wagging nationalist who hung a poster of Stalin in his new ambassadorial office, is not sounding so extreme any more.

“There are two dates that have changed the world in recent years: Sept. 11, 2001, and Aug. 8, 2008,” Mr. Rogozin said in an interview, explaining that the West has not fully grasped how the Georgia conflict has heightened Russians’ fears about being surrounded by NATO. “They are basically identical in terms of significance.”

“Sept. 11 motivated the United States to behave really differently in the world,” he said. “That is to say, Americans realized that even in their homes, they could not feel safe. They had to protect their interests, outside the boundaries of the U.S. For Russia, it is the same thing.”

Only a few months ago, the blustery Mr. Rogozin, 44, was regarded even in the Kremlin as more performance artist than diplomat. Established officials sometimes rolled their eyes when he was mentioned, as if to acknowledge that Vladimir V. Putin, president at the time, had sent him to NATO to do a little trash-talking to rattle the West.

Yet Mr. Rogozin’s arrival at alliance headquarters in Brussels in January might be seen as an omen of the crisis to come. He quickly scorned what he called the “blah, blah, blah” diplomatic niceties and pounded away at a single theme: after years of affronts, Russia had had enough.

Its invasion of Georgia three weeks ago made that apparent, as did its decision on Tuesday to recognize the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the breakaway enclaves at the center of the hostilities. Now the rising stature of Mr. Rogozin, who called NATO criticism of Russia’s military action “bigoted and indecent,” underscores Russia’s new tone — one adopted by both Mr. Putin, now prime minister, and President Dmitri A. Medvedev.

Mr. Rogozin has become a prominent Russian voice even as he remains a provocative figure in Moscow who led a political party that espoused anti-immigrant appeals — including an ad showing dark-skinned immigrants throwing watermelon rinds on the ground — described by some opponents as racist.

After the Georgia conflict broke out, NATO said there would be no “business as usual” in relations with Russia, and Russia in turn suspended some military cooperation. The Kremlin refrained from canceling all ties, saying it would continue to provide assistance in Afghanistan. Still, Mr. Medvedev has assumed a tough stance.

“We do not need illusions of partnership,” he said Monday in a nationally televised appearance with Mr. Rogozin. “When we are being surrounded by bases on all sides, and a growing number of states are being drawn into the North Atlantic bloc and we are being told, ‘Don’t worry, everything is all right,’ naturally we do not like it.”

“If they essentially wreck this cooperation, it is nothing horrible for us,” he said “We are prepared to accept any decision, including the termination of relations.”

Mr. Rogozin is a charismatic orator with a rascally sense of humor, and he at times has succeeded in charming his rivals in Brussels even as he was upbraiding them. More than once in the interview, he ended long discourses in Russian about his views on relations with the West by uttering a single English word that captured how he likes to be viewed: “Troublemaker!”

Mr. Rogozin speaks several languages — he judges English to be his fifth best — but said he shunned some of the diplomatic trappings of life in Brussels, preferring a BMW motorcycle to a chauffeur. He lives there with his wife, and he has a son and two young grandchildren in Moscow.

Despite his harsh words for NATO governments, he expressed fondness for the time he had spent traveling in the United States, noting that his wife lived in New York City for seven years when she was a child and her father was a Soviet diplomat there.

“She simply understands Americans,” Mr. Rogozin said. “Sometimes I say to her, ‘How come they do not understand me?’ and she says, ‘Look,’ and she explains. She helps decode for me.”

He said that when he was in the United States recently, he met many officials and was pleased to meet one particular former cold-war foe, Henry A. Kissinger.

Mr. Rogozin said that in the West, the current crisis might be considered an ethnic spat between Georgia and South Ossetia that got out of hand, but in Russia, it was seen quite differently. He said Russians now understood that the United States was trying to encircle them, in part by siding with the Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, whom he called unstable.

A poll released last week by the Levada Center, a polling institute in Moscow, backed up his assertions, showing that 74 percent of Russians polled believed that Georgia was a pawn of the United States. Asked the cause of the crisis, 49 percent cited Washington’s policies in the region, while 32 percent blamed Georgia. Only 5 percent held Russia responsible.

Mr. Rogozin added that the West had not understood Russian feelings of resentment over Kosovo, which the West recognized this year as independent from Serbia, an ally of Moscow, despite Russian objections. He said the Kremlin bristled at NATO criticism of the Russian military action as not “proportional” because it was far more restrained than the NATO bombing of Belgrade, Serbia’s capital, in 1999.

“Listen, you in Yugoslavia, you did something normal?” he said. “You have no moral right to say it is not proportional. If we did proportionally in the Caucasus what you did in Serbia, then Tbilisi would have been demolished.” Tbilisi is Georgia’s capital.

Perhaps Mr. Rogozin was fated to be a player in this conflict — he shares a birth date, Dec. 21, with Russia’s nemesis, Mr. Saakashvili. Yet before he went to Brussels, he was considered a political has-been, having alienated the Kremlin by making staunchly nationalist statements when he was a member of Parliament.

His former party, Rodina, campaigned on a platform opposing the immigration of people from the Caucasus (including Georgia) and Central Asia.

In 2005, Rodina produced the commercial with the immigrants and watermelon rinds. Mr. Rogozin appears, as does text that says, “Let’s clear the city of garbage.” He denied at the time that the commercial was racist, but the party was banned from local Moscow elections for promoting ethnic hatred. Soon after, he published a political autobiography, “Enemy of the People.”

He thus remains a polarizing figure in Russia, even as the foreign policy establishment moves closer to his hard-line views.

“I myself was perplexed when I heard of this appointment,” said Pavel S. Zolotaryov, deputy director of the Institute for the U.S. and Canada Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences.

American officials at NATO would not comment on Mr. Rogozin. Georgia’s representative to NATO, Revaz Beshidze, said that no matter how outlandishly Mr. Rogozin acted, his behavior had served a purpose.

Mr. Rogozin said he regretted his conduct as a politician and was hoping to rehabilitate his reputation through his work in Brussels. He argued that a little-noticed effect of the Georgia conflict was that it had brought together ethnic Russians and other groups in Russian areas of the Caucasus, like Chechens. All now have joined to oppose Mr. Saakashvili, he said.

“We have a unique chance to overcome this ethnic nationalism in Russia, to stop entering into internal conflicts in Russia,” Mr. Rogozin said.

Still, sometimes he cannot help himself. After arriving in Brussels, he put up in his office a patriotic World War II poster with Soviet soldiers, weapons in hand, next to an adoring portrayal of Stalin. He fancied it as a piece of history. Others at NATO headquarters were not as amused.

Mr. Rogozin relented and removed it. He recounted in the interview how he took it to the United States on his recent visit and gave it to Mr. Kissinger. Then he paused and grinned. “Troublemaker!” he said.

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